(NATIONAL) – The
Supreme Court on Feb. 26 heard
arguments in a case that could deliver a devastating blow to
organized labor.

The
case concerns whether employees can be required to pay dues to a
union even if they don’t belong to it, a debate that is similar
to battles over so-called right-to-work laws that have swept the
country.

This
is another skirmish in the culture wars that pit individual rights
against collective ones. If groups such as unions lose the ability to
raise the funds necessary for collective action, I believe workers
will be worse off, and inequality will rise.

A
right to work

The
Taft-Hartley
Act, passed in 1947 over President Harry Truman’s veto,
paved the way for the case currently before the court by allowing
states to prohibit compulsory union dues through so-called
“right-to-work”
laws.

This
is the core of Janus: the proposition that individual liberties
cannot be subordinated to political coercion that conflicts with a
person’s fundamental values. It follows from this line of
thinking that we should be able to “opt out” of such
collectivist demands as taxes and other laws, even when they support
the common good.

The
same principle is at stake in Masterpiece
Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which also
awaits a
Supreme Court ruling. That case involves a Colorado baker who refused
to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, arguing it would violate his
First Amendment right of religious freedom.

Together,
cases like Janus and Masterpiece Cakeshop would establish a
constitutional principle giving citizens the choice to “opt in”
to collective action rather than being forced to “opt out.”

In
both instances, the law will attempt to resolve the fundamental
conflict between personal values and social demands. The
court’s
opinion has important consequences for workers and their ability to
work collectively to negotiate for better pay or working conditions.

Assault
on collective action

This
assault on collective action in the U.S. isn’t new and goes
back to at least the early 19th century in fights over shoemaker
guilds, which obligated all tradesmen to support the
organizations.

More
recently, in 2012, the Supreme
Court heard a case similar to Janus involving California
state
employees, who are required to pay a fee to the Service Employees
International Union as part of its representation of them in
collective bargaining negotiations. The union sought to collect a
special assessment to finance a political fund, and some employees
who weren’t members sued demanding a right to opt out of paying
the fee. The court agreed and ruled that employees must be asked to
specifically opt in instead.

Their
criticisms of the opt-in idea show how disingenuous it is. That’s
because it worsens the “free rider” problem, in which
people can attain all the benefits of group efforts without bearing
any of the costs. The kind of cooperation that is essential to a free
society can’t happen without collective action, as economist
Mancur Olson showed in his classic
study of public goods and organizational behavior.

Unions
and inequality

If
the Supreme Court’s ruling on Janus adopts Alito’s view
that workers must always opt in to the costs of collective bargaining
agreements, it will inflict severe damage on labor organizations and,
as a result, on workers and many others.

Researchers
such as economist Thomas Piketty provide convincing
evidence that declines in union power are correlated with
increases in economic inequality.

Today
in the U.S., only about 6.5 percent of private workers belong
to a union, which is about the lowest in decades. That figure
is
higher in the public sector, at 34 percent, but if Janus topples a
central pillar of union support by undercutting the vital revenue
stream of dues, those organizations will begin to atrophy like
private unions. And mark my words, the American working class will
suffer.

____________________________

By
Raymond Hogler, Ph.D teaches
labor and employment relations at Colorado State University. His
most recent book is a study of American labor law and how it shaped
union formation, published by Praeger in 2015 ("The End of
American Labor Unions: The Right-to-Work Movement and the Erosion of
Collective Bargaining").

This
report was first published at The
Conversation and is reprinted here with permission